Temptress (Roxanne)
by setepenre-set
Summary: The story of how Roxanne Ritchi became the supervillain known as the Temptress, her relationship with the superhero Megamind, and her eventual reclamation of herself. (sequel to my story Temptress) Don't copy to another site.
1. Chapter 1

Roxanne is thirteen, the first time she gets a crush on a boy.

He asks her out three days after she realizes she likes him and it's like a dream. He tells her that she's beautiful, and when they kiss he gets this glazed look in his eyes that makes her feel wonderfully feminine and powerful. They date for three months and then one night they're kissing in his room (she snuck through his window, the thrill of breaking the rules part of the fun)—but she has to get home soon, so she reluctantly pulls away to tell him goodbye and—

He doesn't want to let her go.

She thinks he's joking at first, but when she tries to tug her wrist from his grip, he doesn't let go of her and she tries to pull away, tries harder, harder, beginning to panic, and suddenly it's not funny, not funny at all, and his eyes are glazed over, glassy, like he's not even seeing her and—

Roxanne breaks his nose.

(the breaking up with him is pretty much implied after that.)

He's—he's weird, really weird, after that; he follows her around at school and stares at her (eyes glazed over, glassy) and when she looks out her bedroom window one night she sees him standing in her yard, staring up at her window.

She calls for her mom and her mom calls the police and after that, the boy's parents move out of town and she doesn't see him again.

* * *

It takes her about six months to feel okay enough to like someone again after that, and when she does, it's a girl, which makes her more than a little worried that the whole trauma thing has permanently screwed up her brain. But before she can worry about it too long, the girl asks her over for a sleepover (which is—weird, since Roxanne didn't realize that the two of them were actually friends—)

There's a sweet, pleasurable tingle in Roxanne's stomach, the whole time they're hanging out that night, and when they're laying side-by-side in the girl's bed, and the girl whispers 'you're beautiful' and kisses her, Roxanne feels deliriously happy.

(the girl's eyes are glazed, glassy, but surely that's just a trick of the shadows, of the half-light of the darkened bedroom)

They date. It's meant to be a secret, something strictly private, between the two of them, but the girl…can't seem to control herself; she's always reaching for Roxanne's hand beneath the lunch table, brushing Roxanne's hair out of her eyes, pulling her into the bathroom during passing periods to make out.

At first it's flattering, the way she can't seem to keep her hands off Roxanne but—

"Come on, I said no; I have to go—" Roxanne says, laughing and pulling away, "—we're going to be late, come on."

The girl doesn't seem to hear her, pushes her against the door of the stall and kisses her even more insistently, and the memory

(suddenly not funny; not funny at all)

hits Roxanne in a sick rush and she pushes the girl away with more force than she intends.

"No," she says.

The girl looks at her, and instead of an expression of hurt or amusement or even anger there's just—

Her face is just blank, scarily blank, her eyes glazed and Roxanne fumbles for the latch on the stall door and flees the bathroom.

The girl runs after her and tries to kiss her in the hallway, in public, tears running down her face, but expression still weirdly blank.

("You're beautiful; you're beautiful," she says over and over again, and one of the hall monitors has to physically pull her away from Roxanne.)

* * *

It all comes out, after that, the secret dating; everything.

The girl's parents send her to a Christian boarding school.

Roxanne's mother has a long talk with her about 'being confused' and 'leading people on' and 'giving people the wrong idea' and Roxanne cries and cries and cries.

* * *

She wears layers, oversized sweaters to disguise the shape of her body, subdued colors, no makeup. She develops a trick of ducking her head to hide behind the curtain of her hair.

Roxanne teaches herself not to look at people she finds attractive (because if she does, they always look back at her, walk up to her, talk to her, touch her arm, their eyes going glassy and blank and—)

She trains herself not to see beauty, to look away when she sees something that gives her that burst of wonder/pleasure.

(it begins to be automatic, becomes second nature, this looking away from beauty; she finds herself looking away from artwork, from flowers, from sunsets)

In spite of all this, in spite of the puritanical avoidance of beauty, in spite of the ugly clothes and the hiding behind her hair, in spite of the way she barely talks to people—

People still stare at her as she goes by, their eyes glazing, their mouths slack. They look her up and down, like they can penetrate through the shapeless layers of sweaters with the force of their gazes.

She starts high school.

(Her head ducked as she hunches beneath her full backpack like it's the shell of a turtle.)

(She wishes it was the shell of a turtle, wishes she could pull herself beneath it, hide herself entirely from view, and then just stay there.)

"Don't give people the wrong idea about you," Roxanne's mother says, and Roxanne doesn't understand how any of them are getting any ideas about her at all.

She's dressed in the sweater equivalent of a potato sack, for god's sake! The sheer lumpy shapelessness that should kill any interest immediately. And yet!

"You're so beautiful," one boy whispers, leaning close to her ear, "I just want to see what you're really like beneath all of that—"

"I'm a carnivorous eldritch abomination with teeth in a place you won't like to find them," Roxanne says, voice deadpan flat. "Take your hand off my arm."

"You're so beautiful," a girl says, when they're eating lunch together in the band hall, to avoid the lunchroom.

Roxanne gives her a wary look from beneath her curtain of hair. That comment might be a sign that things are about to get weird. Which is unfortunate. She likes this girl; they've bonded over their mutual hatred of sugary pop music and the school's ridiculous lunch policy.

"I'm really not," Roxanne says flatly, hiding her face, scowling her most unattractive scowl.

The girl laughs.

"I don't even wear makeup," Roxanne says.

"Oh, I know; you've got this really great natural beauty look going for you! Like a—pixie or an elf or something in those clothes. Really—fresh. Different—beautiful."

Roxanne makes a deliberately ugly face and the girl laughs.

"Okay, maybe not when you do that," she says to Roxanne.

Her tone is light, teasing, fun; Roxanne glances up in relief, lips curving into a smile and—

The girl's breath catches and her eyes go glazed and glassy and she leans forward to kiss Roxanne.

There's a split second where Roxanne considers letting her do it; she doesn't like this girl like that, but she's always been so nice to Roxanne and evidently this girl has—

(don't lead people on)

—gotten the wrong idea about Roxanne and it has to be Roxanne's fault somehow, so maybe she should just—

(a pulse of panic, the remembrance of the boy's hand around her wrist, not letting go, the memory of being pushed up against the bathroom stall and)

(blank eyes blank eyes)

Roxanne jerks away before their lips connect, jumps to her feet and walks away fast.

She eats lunch alone in the library after that.

Half a year goes by like this, in quiet, desperate, lonely misery for Roxanne.

And then the boy whose locker is next to hers gets a girlfriend.

The two of them make out against the lockers every day, and Roxanne trains herself not to look at that, too, but—

—one day she turns her head on accident and catches sight of them, the two of them wrapped up in each other, her hands in his hair, his arms around her waist, and Roxanne can't quite help the sudden twist of envy, of desire, of I want that

(something nice, something not—not scary or possessive, just nice—)

The girl's eyes open; she sees Roxanne looking and Roxanne flushes, drops her gaze, the curtain of her hair falling over her face. She's moves to step away from the lockers, but she sees the girl frown and let go of her boyfriend, sees her step in front of Roxanne, blocking her escape.

Roxanne tenses, ready for the girl to snap at her for staring at her boyfriend, and then she jumps as the girl brushes Roxanne's hair back from her face instead.

Roxanne looks up, startled, just as the girl leans in to kiss her.

The shock of it makes Roxanne jerk her head back, slamming it against the locker, and then the girl's boyfriend is beside Roxanne, pressed up against her, kissing her ,too.

Fear blooms in Roxanne's chest; she struggles out of their grip, only to have someone else grab her wrist and pull her towards them, and then there's a crowd around her, all of them reaching for her, their eyes blank and their mouths slack, and it's like a nightmare; she can't get away from them; can't get away—

Panic is Roxanne's friend; it gives her the strength to claw her way out of the crowd.

(people turning in the hall to see what was causing the commotion, and then their eyes going blank, too)

She runs.

She runs out of the school, runs down one street, and then another—she doesn't stop running until she's home. The house is empty; her mother and stepfather are at work; her step siblings at school, but Roxanne flees to her bedroom anyway, grabs the home phone on her way there, locks the door.

She dials 911 with shaking fingers.

The operator answers: a woman's voice.

"I—I—th-think there's—something—w-wrong with me," Roxanne manages to say, between sobs.

She describes it to the woman, crying as she does.

The woman is sympathetic, soothing. She connects Roxanne with another voice—someone who specializes in Roxanne's kind of problems, she says to Roxanne, and Roxanne is completely and utterly grateful.

This new voice—another woman—listens to Roxanne's descriptions, too, and asks questions. She's less sympathetic than the 911 operator, but she has a tone of brisk efficiency that Roxanne actually finds more soothing than the first woman's sympathy.

This is a person who solves problems, Roxanne thinks, and when this woman says—

"Stay where you are; we're coming."

—Roxanne feels nothing but relief.

(later, after everything, the memory of her relief makes her feel physically ill)

"Thank you," she whispers into the phone.

"Don't worry," the woman says, "we're going to help you."

(this is the first lie that they tell her.)

* * *

(there are other lies)

* * *

She lets them into the house, when they knock.

"Roxanne Ritchi?"

It's the efficient woman; Roxanne recognizes her voice.

"Yes, I—"

The woman nods at the man next to her; he moves suddenly towards Roxanne, grabbing her upper arm, his other hand holding—

(a needle, silver and glistening)

—there's a quick, sharp pain in the side of her neck, and then nothing.

When she wakes up, she's in the lab, and she's wearing a collar.

The collar, they say, is there for her own good

(this is a lie.)

once she learns to control it, they say, they'll let her go home

(this is a lie.)

everything is going to be fine, they say

(and this is very definitely a lie.)

* * *

After a while (days and days and days and she loses track of the days), when she screams at them to let her go, screams that she's getting out of here, she has to get out of here, they tell her that there is no way she can escape from the facility, that she'll never leave.

(this is not a lie.)

* * *

(but it is incorrect.)

* * *

 _...to be continued._


	2. Chapter 2

The collar is there to keep her in line, to keep her under their control.

They test her, making her turn her power on for them, making her turn it off. Whenever she doesn't manage to do what they want, the collar delivers a painful electric shock: a short, quick burst. When she uses her powers without their permission, it delivers a different kind of shock, a continuous current of agony that goes on until she turns her powers off again.

Here's the thing Roxanne learns about pain, though:

 _you can get used to it._

She works her way up to it gradually, training herself, controlling herself, until—

"—you're beautiful," the guard says, eyes blank, mouth slack.

The electricity is lancing through Roxanne's body and she wants to scream with how much it hurts, but she smiles, slow and seductive.

(she's dressed in a shapeless white smock like a hospital gown. they shaved her hair off a long time ago. she hasn't had a shower in weeks. she isn't sure how long it's been since she's seen herself in a mirror, but she's very sure that she's not anything like beautiful)

"Would you like to kiss me?" she asks.

He nods, stumbles forward like she's yanked a string attached to him.

"Ah-ah-ah," she says playfully (her nerves are howling, her fingers beginning to twitch and jerk with the current, but she holds on, spins the power out from inside her like spidersilk, wrapping it around the guard). "You have to do something for me, first."

"Anything," the guard says.

"Take the collar off of me," Roxanne commands.

He does.

She does give him that kiss.

(afterwards, she slips the gun out of his holster and shoots him with it.)

* * *

She can't go back home; she knows that; odds are her family won't even be there, but _they'll_ be waiting; they'll be there, but she doesn't—she can't—

She goes home.

Her family is gone, just as she knew they would be, and _they_ are there, waiting for her, just as she knew they would be—the woman with the efficient voice, and men in dark clothing, with guns that they point at Roxanne. The woman has a gun, too, although she's holding it at her side, instead of aiming it at Roxanne.

"Your family will be safe if you come quietly with us," the woman with the efficient voice says, lips curving up in something that looks like a smile.

Roxanne's laughter wells up inside her like screaming.

"All right," Roxanne says. "I'll—I'll come with you."

She takes a step forward, sees triumph flash in the woman's face—

And then she lets the power out.

The woman realizes what she's doing just a second too late; her eyes go wide with fear for just an instant before they go blank and glazed and hungry, like the eyes of all the men with guns.

"You're so beautiful," the woman with the efficient voice breathes.

Roxanne lets her lips curve up. She looks around at the men with guns, letting her gaze take in the whole crowd of them.

"Do you think I'm beautiful?" Roxanne says.

"—yes—"

"—beautiful—"

"—so beautiful—"

"Do you love me?" Roxanne asks, spreading her arms, letting the power flow out from inside her. "Do you want to make me happy?"

"—yes, oh, yes—"

"—please, yes—"

"—yes—"

Roxanne smiles at them and they smile back at her.

"Kill yourselves," she says.

* * *

(later, Roxanne throws up in the kitchen sink of what used to be her house. then she grabs what she can carry of her old clothes and she runs)

She runs and she runs and she runs.

(hitch a ride, let her power out, steal the car, steal their wallets.)

(again. again. again.)

* * *

She doesn't realize she's running _home_ until she's there.

Metro City, the last place she remembers being happy, the place where she lived with her mother and father, before he left, before her mother remarried and they moved away, before this horrible thing inside of Roxanne manifested itself and tore her life apart.

Roxanne has no plan, when she gets there, but she does have a little money—enough for food and a change of clothes.

She meets Metro Man for the first time when he comes to arrest her while she's standing in line at a dollar store with a plastic shopping basket full of cheap clothing and non-perishable snacks.

He doesn't say he's there to arrest her, not at first, just smiles at her, all teeth and what he clearly thinks is charm.

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with me, miss," he says.

He's—he's very large, and he's standing too close for Roxanne's comfort, and all of the other shoppers are edging away from her, looking at her out of the corners of their eyes.

"No," she says, clutching her plastic basket to her chest and mentally measuring the distance to the doors. "I don't know you. I'm not going anywhere with you."

Metro Man's smile turns into a look of sternness; he takes a step closer, and Roxanne, her panic beginning to rise, lets the power start to gather, start to coil.

"Let's not make this any harder than it has to be," he says.

He reaches for her arm and Roxanne lashes out with her power in blind fear, hitting him with it hard and fast.

He stumbles back a step, eyes glazing over for a moment, and then he shakes his head, as if to clear it.

"The seductive bolts of evil bounce off the armor of justice!" he declares.

"What the fuck?" says Roxanne, because she has no idea what he's talking about, and also oh god did he just shake off her power oh god what's she going to—

He moves to grab her again and she screams as loudly as she can and throws the shopping basket at his head, then darts for the doors.

(he catches her in the parking lot; the bastard is crazy fast, and when she hits him with another burst of her pheromone powers, he just shakes it off again.)

She screams and fights the whole way to the prison, hitting him over and over with her powers, for all the good it does her.

(it does her no good. she just ends up with bruises and a dislocated shoulder from Metro Man holding onto her too tightly while she fights)

* * *

Turns out the fuckers from the lab (the ones that are still left alive, anyway) have classified her as a 'Superpowered Threat to Society: Level Two'. There's a whole list of crimes she's committed.

They conveniently leave out the part of the story where they locked her up and tortured her, first.

In the prison cell, Roxanne laughs until she cries, cries until she screams, screams until she goes hoarse—and then she forces herself to stop screaming and gather her thoughts.

(they'll be coming for her; she can't stay here; she can't)

Her powers are tapped out from trying to use them on Metro Man. That's only happened to her a couple times before, back at the lab, and it always left her feeling weak and shaky, but at least she knows they will come back.

(hopefully, hopefully her powers will come back before they come to get her.)

She charms a guard and breaks out of the prison six hours later.

* * *

 _...to be continued._


	3. Chapter 3

Roxanne goes to ground as thoroughly as she can, sleeps for a few hours huddled in a corner of an abandoned building.

A nightmare (the lab her collar pain no) wakes her up, sometime near dawn. She curls into a tighter ball, shivering, and tries to come up with a plan.

Options. She has to have some options. (think Roxanne, think)

She could go public. She could tell people what they did to her, in that lab.

(the people in the store, edging away from her, looking at her out of the corners of their eyes like she was a criminal, just because a smiling man in a white suit said she was)

God, and she didn't do herself any favors, going crazy on him like that, panicking in the prison, escaping custody so dramatically. Shit shit shit.

No one's going to believe her. No one's going to listen.

(the people in the store just stood there and let Metro Man take her. they just watched while she screamed.)

She's on her own. The only way anyone is going to help her is if she makes them, if she uses her powers and twists their will and forces them to help her.

No one is going to save her.

(the blood, all the blood, too much blood on the ground outside of her old house, after she'd finished with the team that the lab sent to collect her and she doesn't deserve to be saved, does she)

Roxanne presses a hand to her mouth and tries to cry quietly.

She could run. Go somewhere else, anywhere else. A different city, or—god, somewhere without people? The idea of no people is appealing but—but if they find her again, she'll have to have people around, people she can use her powers on, because without her powers to protect her, she's entirely helpless.

And where is she going to go? She's never lived anywhere but Wisconsin and Metro City; she doesn't know anywhere else, doesn't know anything about any other places. At least here, she has a sense of the geography, places to hide, places to escape to.

She can't stay in Metro City though, surely she can't—she's already classified as a superpowered threat to society.

A thought—dances at the edges of her mind. Something about—

Roxanne takes a sharp breath.

Before her father left, he worked as a public defender in the city; he mostly dealt with ordinary criminals, but she remembers that once he got called in to defend a guy who'd had—some kind of superpowers—superspeed, maybe?

Whatever it had been, though, the guy had used his powers to commit crimes in several different cities before finally coming to live in Metro City. He'd committed crimes here, too, and he'd been caught and arrested.

What had been so interesting about that case, though, was the fact that the man hadn't been trying to plead innocent—Roxanne's father had been trying to get him classified as a Level One Superpowered Threat to Society.

Level One Superpowered Threats to Society who lived in a city with an official Defender cannot legally be extradited to another location.

(The logic, Roxanne remembers her father saying, is that the Defender who fights them regularly will be best suited to handle them, if they should escape.)

If someone is a Level One Superpowered Threat to Society, and they attach themselves to a place like Metro City—

—Metro City was the only place they can legally be held or serve time. Because Metro City will have jurisdiction.

The people at the lab had shot themselves in the foot when they'd gotten her classified as a superpowered threat to society, Roxanne realizes, hope dawning. They'd meant to keep her from escaping them, but if she manages to get her threat level raised to One—

Then they won't be able to touch her.

She goes to the library.

She doesn't really know where else to go.

Roxanne goes there when the library is open, stays until after it closes. She hides in a cabinet in the staff room, curled up into a tiny ball.

And when everyone else has gone, she climbs out of the cabinet and researches supervillains.

Halfway through the night, she gets up to take a break from reading and wanders around the library, exploring. She remembers it, of course, from when she lived in Metro City before, but mostly what she remembers is the children's section.

Roxanne ends up there, at last, wandering through the maze of shelves, trailing her fingertips over brightly colored books of the children's section.

There's a door back there, behind the shelves, a door marked 'Authorized Personnel Only'; Roxanne opens it curiously, climbs over the grate that's set across the bottom of the doorway, and walks down the short hall to a stairwell.

For the first time since—since before the lab—Roxanne feels something like—

—it's not happiness, exactly, more like—

—excitement.

An excitement that doesn't have anything to do with fear.

She thinks of the books she read when she was younger, books about children who stepped through a hidden doorway and into another world to be heroes, and her heart flutters with excited wonder, as if she might be one of those children.

(as if she's not too old and too damaged to be anything like a hero.)

She climbs the stairs and her sense of wonder only increases when the staircase ends with a landing—and a turquoise-painted door.

Roxanne touches the door, fingertips brushing across the wood. She takes hold of the doorknob, and twists.

It turns in her hand.

She opens the door and steps forward.

Roxanne gasps, one hand flying to her mouth, eyes wide.

It's a house. She's in a house.

There's a house in the library.

Well, an apartment, anyway—Roxanne walks into the apartment and looks around.

It's been abandoned a long time, she can tell; there's dust on the floor, and the rooms are almost completely devoid of furniture—no beds in the bedrooms, no sofa in the living room. There's a table in the kitchen, but nothing in the cabinet over the bathroom sink.

She sees her own reflection in the tarnished bathroom mirror, her face pale and thin and faintly green-tinged by the antique glass. Her hair has grown out, now; it reaches nearly to her chin, greasy and limp and tangled.

Roxanne runs her fingers through it, trying to work out some of the knots. She glances down at the sink, tilts her head, wondering—

Roxanne turns on the tap and laughs when it works. The water comes out in rusty-looking spurts at first, but after a few minutes it flows in a clear, steady stream. She ducks her head beneath it, lets the water wash through her hair, and then straightens up again, grinning. Her reflection grins back at her.

There's a bathtub in here.

"I am going to live here," she says to her reflection, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, water dripping down her collar.

Leaving the apartment is difficult; she's half afraid it'll disappear as soon as her back is turned. But she does it, going downstairs and grabbing as many of her supervillainy research books as she can carry.

She has to make two trips to get them all, but the apartment is there both times.

Once she's got all of the books upstairs, she takes a minute to think things through.

The apartment door wasn't locked when she came up here the first time—there is a lock on the door, but if she turns it, will that cause suspicion? Do people come up here?

She chews on her lip.

Well, if people come up here, then they'll probably think that they were the ones who locked it, or that—someone else working here locked it. Would they have a key? Someone will have a key, surely.

How can she stay here if people can get in?

For a moment, despair threatens, but she shakes it off. No. She'll figure this out; she will; this is her home now; she won't give it up.

Cabinets. Like she hid in earlier! The kitchen cabinets?

Roxanne goes to inspect the kitchen more closely, looks up at the cabinets speculatively. Sleeping in them all day sounds extremely uncomfortable, but she'll do it if she has to. She—

There's a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Roxanne climbs up onto the formica-topped counter, stands on tiptoe, and opens the trapdoor. Then she pulls herself up through it.

An attic.

There's a kind of window set into the far wall—not a normal window, an octagonal hole with slanting wooden slats on the outside, layered overtop of each other so that light from the streetlamp comes through only in thin, indirect beams. Nobody on the outside will be able to see in; the wooden slats would have blocked their view even if the attic hadn't been so high above the street level. Roxanne has seen the octagonal window thing before, from the outside. She's always assumed it was just ornamental.

The attic is bigger than her cell at the lab, although the ceiling slants so that she's only able to stand up straight when she's in the middle of the room.

The room is empty, which is promising; if nothing is stored up here, there's no reason for anyone to come up here.

Someone has drawn on the walls—no, Roxanne realizes, squinting closely, not just drawn, written, too. The walls are covered in what looks like—blueprints, formulas, equations…

She reaches out to touch one of the drawings—a sketch of something that looks like a kind of flying robot fish with long mechanical tendrils—arms?

Is someone else living up here?

Roxanne looks around the attic again. No, the dust is thick on the floor, undisturbed by footprints. Whoever drew on the walls hasn't been here for a long time.

She looks at another of the drawings, fascinated. Some sort of—gun. A laser gun, all of the parts drawn in painstaking detail. There are diagrams.

Who on earth drew all this?

Roxanne shakes her head and steps away from the wall. She can look at the diagrams later.

She's definitely going to sleep up here; it's much safer than the apartment downstairs.

She should get something heavy to put over the trapdoor, to keep it closed, make it difficult for anyone to come through…tomorrow night, she decides. It's getting late, now—or—early. Close to dawn.

Roxanne sleeps in the corner of the attic, curled up with the books, and for the first time since the lab, there are no nightmares.

* * *

 _...to be continued._


	4. Chapter 4

Roxanne makes her plans in the attic, and in the apartment downstairs. Learns exactly what kind of mayhem she'll need to cause to get herself classified as a Level One Threat, as a supervillain, plots out how to make it happen.

She keeps books in the attic, and the food that she steals—cans, mostly, and other things that don't go bad. Blankets, pillows, cushions.

She steals houseplants, sets them up underneath the little octagonal window, where the slats let the sunlight through during the day, waters them faithfully, fusses over them, moving them around to catch the most sun possible. Most of them remain small and sickly, in spite of all she can do, but one of them, a large, spiky succulent, thrives against all reason in the dim little attic, growing green and verdant.

Sometimes she talks to the person who drew on the walls. She can almost feel them beside her, sometimes, when she's examining the diagrams.

Sometimes, she can almost see them. Out of the corner of her eye, but not—she knows that they're not there. Not really.

(She talks to them anyway, though, pretending.)

The wall drawings are ingenious, and really her greatest bit of luck since finding the library apartment. The things on the walls—robots and laser guns and—

"Were you a supervillain?" Roxanne asks, not turning her head, looking at the diagram for the gun. "Is that what all this is?"

She builds the gun.

It's not exactly the same; she doesn't have the proper power source that the diagram calls for. She actually has no idea what the power source in the diagram even is—but she experiments and substitutes and finally she comes up with something that's—

"Dangerous," Roxanne murmurs, caressing the gun. "Very dangerous."

She can't get all of the settings on the diagram to work; her gun only has three that function— _zap_ , which hurts and knocks over small objects; _stun_ , which hurts, paralyses you for about ten minutes, knocks over large objects and sends small ones flying; and _destroy_ , which makes things explode in a really gratifying violent manner.

Roxanne practices with the gun, and she practices with her powers. They didn't work on Metro Man last time, but they almost worked, she felt it. So if she builds them up enough…

Supervillainy—studying the supervillains in the library books, Roxanne comes to realize that the—the presentation of the villainy is as important as the actual villainy itself.

Maybe even more important. A supervillain has costumes, a title—it's almost theatrical.

In the tarnished bathroom mirror of the library apartment, Roxanne teaches herself to put on makeup. Red lipstick, crimson bright like freshly spilled blood—red is a particularly unforgiving color; she uses up nearly an entire tube of it before she figures out how to put it on without smudging or going outside the lines of her lips or getting it on her teeth. Dark eye makeup—mascara is such a pain, always leaving little specks of black on her cheeks, and liquid eyeliner is even more unforgiving than red lipstick.

She cuts her hair short. Not shaved off, like it was in the lab, but pixie-cut short. Harder for anyone to grab a handful of it. And with it short like that, she can pass for a boy, if the light is dim and she wears a lot of clothes and no makeup.

Roxanne gets a wig, gets several wigs, experiments with trying to make herself look like different people—older, younger, blonde, red-head, studious and bespectacled or school girlishly sweet, pale and wispy or, with the help of bronzer, deeply tanned.

She stays in the library like that for four and a half months, planning, and slowly her reflection in the mirror starts to look a little less skinny and bedraggled and hunted, her eyes a little less sunken and haunted.

Roxanne sees the night visitor for the first time in the second month.

She's standing next to a bookshelf, running her eyes over the spines, looking for a particular title when she hears—

footsteps.

Someone here, someone in the library, someone—

Roxanne draws deeper into the shadows, hides behind the shelf, and she hears the footsteps coming closer—closer—and then they veer off slightly to the right.

Then everything is quiet for what seems to Roxanne like an eternity.

(who is it; who could be here; what are they doing here)

Finally she can't stand it any longer; she has to look.

As silently as she can, Roxanne slips between the aisles, wending her way towards where the footsteps went. She stops behind a shelf and dares to peer around it, trying to see—

—a person is standing there, in the romance section, right next to that poster of the lighthouse in a storm.

A person, but the proportions are wrong, the head is too large and his skin—Roxanne squints in the dim light of the library.

 _Blue_.

His skin is _blue_.

He doesn't seem to realize he's being watched, which is fortunate, because in her fascination, Roxanne fails to slip back behind her shelf. She stares.

While she stares, he puts a book back on the shelf, sighs, and rubs a hand over his face.

Is he tired? No—no, not tired, the set of his shoulders is wrong for that, too stiffly held. The gesture isn't tired it's—unhappy?

He drops his hand and looks over the books, stroking his fingertips over the spines. He pulls one out and turns it over to read the back, gives a minute shake of his head, and returns it to the shelf, pulls out another one.

Finally he seems to find a book that he likes. He flips it open and reads a few pages of it, then closes it and starts to turn.

Roxanne dodges quickly into another aisle as he moves down the line of books. His footsteps fade into the distance, and, after a while, she hears the sound of the library doors closing.

He comes back periodically after that, returning books, picking out another. Always that section. Sometimes he'll go weeks without returning; other times he'll come several days in a row.

Roxanne probably should find his visits a source of annoyance; they're certainly inconvenient, but—she feels a strange kind of kinship to him.

He's— _real_ , more real than the ghost of whoever wrote on the attic walls.

* * *

She starts hiding near the romance section for a bit of time each night, hoping he'll come.

* * *

She keeps a tight leash on her powers whenever he's there, but she can never quite get them to turn off completely. If he feels them, though, it must be a very mild compulsion, easily dismissed from his mind.

Roxanne takes to reading the books he returns. There had been very few books in the lab, and she hadn't often been allowed to read them; they'd frequently been withheld from her as punishment. The first novel she reads, after escaping, is one the night visitor puts back—Shy Violet.

(she would have thought she'd hate to read romance, but she devours them. it's not like—the books aren't like her powers. they're—real, in spite of being fiction, real in a way that her powers aren't.)

( _I want that_ , she thinks, and pushes the thought aside.)

* * *

The second time Roxanne faces Metro Man, she does it as the _Temptress_ , and when she uses her powers on him—

It _works_.

The jewel robbery goes off without a hitch. Metro Man gazes at her adoringly as she walks away wearing a fortune in jewels, a scarlet lipstick print on his cheek, her calling card.

Later, Roxanne looks at the shining gems, spread out on the ragged blankets she sleeps on, and laughs until she cries.

She falls asleep crying.

* * *

The seventh time the Temptress faces Metro Man, she doesn't actually face _him_ at all.

"—it's you," Roxanne blurts out, staring stupidly at the blue-skinned figure dressed all in black, holding a ray gun identical to the one drawn on her attic walls.

He looks confused, and then there's a flash of blue light.

She wakes up when they rehydrate her in the prison.

(she breaks out in eighteen hours)

(when she gets back to her attic at the library, she looks at the wall with the ray gun blueprints, and she laughs until she sobs.)

* * *

Is everyone's life like this?

Does the universe throw this kind of cruel irony at everyone, or is it just Roxanne?

Her attic ghost and her library visitor are the same person, and they're not a supervillain at all, they're a fucking superhero. Hers. Her fucking superhero.

 _(Megamind. Megamind. His name is Megamind.)_

* * *

The next time he comes to the library at night, she watches him pick out a book, and she does not try to use her powers on him, and she does not attack. When he's gone, she picks up the book he left behind and sits on the floor in front of the lighthouse poster. She doesn't read the book, just curls up into a miserable huddled ball.

The second time that the Temptress faces Megamind, she's prepared, and she has time to use her powers.

They don't work on him.

They don't work on him the third time she faces him; they don't work on the fourth time; they don't work on the fifth.

They work on Metro Man; they even work, after a fashion, on Megamind's sidekick, who's a fish in a robot suit, for god's sake.

But they don't work on Megamind.

The sixth time they don't work on him is when Roxanne realizes that they actually don't work on him at all. No matter how hard she hits him with them. No effect.

She overtaxes her powers badly, that time, ends up in the prison for a day and a half. When she gets home, she takes a bath in the apartment bathtub, the water as hot as the creaky old pipes will produce.

They don't work on him. Her powers don't work on him. Of all the people.

The universe hates her, Roxanne decides. It's playing with her, torturing her like a cat with a mouse.

* * *

 _...to be continued._

* * *

 **Happy day 10 of my Birthday Fic Month! Thank you all so much for continuing to read and review my stories; it really means a lot to me, and makes me so happy!**


	5. Chapter 5

She meets his brainbots the fourteenth time they face each other.

Based on the bots' reaction to her, Roxanne is fairly certain that they're cyborgs, as opposed to pure robots. She can't actually make animals do what she wants with her powers, but they always seem to like her an inordinate amount.

Megamind tells the brainbots to attack and instead they just surround her, making excitable mechanical 'bowg' sounds and trying to rub their glass braincases beneath her hands.

They're—

"Yes, yes; you're all very pretty," Roxanne tells them desperately. Good lord, she can't shoot them when they're trying to get her to _pet_ _them_ ; that would just be—"No, no; I don't want to play fetch!—I—Roxanne is busy right now, babies!"

Megamind makes a choking noise that she's pretty sure is laughter, and then raises his gun to dehydrate her. Unfortunately for him, the brainbots keep getting in the way.

Roxanne tries to escape, but the brainbots keep hovering around her, impeding her progress. Megamind follows, unable to get a clear shot.

The next hour and a half is spent in the slowest, most ridiculous low-speed chase imaginable.

Megamind tends to use the brainbots sparingly in their battles after that, and he never does quite get them to stop liking her.

* * *

Having Megamind for a nemesis is infinitely more difficult than having Metro Man for a nemesis. It requires far, far more effort, and planning, and ingenuity. The first time she wins against him, she is absolutely giddy with triumph and relief.

He comes to the library later that night. Doesn't bring a book, doesn't take a book, doesn't read. He just sits beneath the lighthouse poster, staring at it dully. Roxanne, watching him, feels all of her joy at winning fade.

 _I'm sorry_ , she imagines saying, imagines sitting beside him, imagines putting her arms around him, _I'm sorry; I'm so sorry. I don't want to be doing this. I'm so sorry._

The twenty-first time the Temptress wins against Megamind, she's declared a Superpowered Threat to Society: Level One, and for the first time since the lab, Roxanne feels like she can breathe.

Relief makes her careless; the next time she faces Megamind, she loses badly, her powers relaxing at the wrong moment, one of the guards she's got in thrall slipping from her control.

Being shot is extremely painful, she decides, as she passes out in Megamind's arms.

* * *

When she wakes up, she's in the prison infirmary.

And there's a collar around her neck.

* * *

Roxanne screams. She screams for hours, power flowing out, the collar's electricity crackling through her in agony, making her spine arch, making her scream in pain as well as rage and terror, and of course, of course, even if they can't have her; of course she's never really safe not safe never safe.

Her stitches tear, of course, a different kind of agony, and then the pain rises up in a wave of blackness and she loses consciousness.

When she wakes up and Megamind is in the prison infirmary, standing beside her bed, she assumes she's imagining him. There's no reason for him to be there.

She's imagined people before, of course, seen people who weren't really there. Really seen them, not like her pretense of someone

(him)

in the attic with her.

In the lab, when she was being punished with meal restriction and the bright merciless lights that prevented sleep—that was when she really saw. When things were at their worst.

Things seem to be pretty close to at their worst right now.

Megamind's lips are moving as he speaks to someone on the other side of her bed, but she can't really hear what he's saying, which only deepens her conviction that he's not really real.

Maybe she's dying, Roxanne thinks, with a dull kind of hope. It's nice that he's here, while she's dying.

"—what was the power source?" Roxanne mumbles idly.

She's not expecting him to look at her, but he does, his green eyes wide. He looks worried.

"What?"

She hears him that time, which is interesting.

"—power source," she says, voice just a thread. It hurts to talk. "—was it?"

"She's delirious," a voice on the other side of Roxanne says.

She doesn't look in that voice's direction. She's not interested in it.

"Power source," she says, since her hallucination of Megamind still looks confused, "on—the gun. Blueprints—"

She gestures limply, the chain of the handcuff holding her to the bed clinking.

"—doesn't say the power source."

"The—blueprints?" Megamind's eyes widen.

Roxanne feels very tired. Her eyelids keep slipping closed without her permission.

"—never could get the dehydration to work," she whispers, and this time when her eyes close, she cannot make them open again, and she drifts into the darkness.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, she's still in the infirmary, but she's slightly more lucid. Apparently she's not going to die.

Not dying, Roxanne thinks, is actually more painful than just being shot.

Someone on the other side of the room is talking in a low, furious voice. With a monumental effort, Roxanne turns her head to look at them.

Megamind is speaking to the prison doctor and the prison warden. The effort of turning her head was too much; she finds herself drifting towards unconsciousness again every time she blinks, every time she closes her eyes.

 _"—off of her—"_ Megamind's voice.

 _"—government agents—"_ another voice says.

 _"—not consulted—"_ says a third voice.

 _"—ever put it on her again, I will break her out of here myself—"_ Megamind's voice says, quite distinctly, as her eyes slip closed.

* * *

When she wakes up again, there's no one beside her bed except the prison doctor.

But she isn't wearing the collar.

She wanders vaguely in and out of consciousness; at one point, she thinks Megamind is sitting beside her bed, curled up in a plastic chair. The image of him is very vivid; he's even reading a romance novel.

Roxanne must make a sound, because he looks up at her, and uncurls his legs, puts down his book on the bedside table.

"Are you thirsty?" he asks, voice soft. He picks up a styrofoam cup, holds the straw out to her.

Roxanne drinks, relief flooding her body at the sensation of water on her tongue, on her parched throat.

As far as hallucinations go, this one is A-fucking-plus.

Megamind puts the cup back down. He reaches for a black cord he's wearing around his neck and pulls a kind of glowing blue pendant from beneath his sweatshirt, holds it up to show her.

"This is the power source," he says. "You wouldn't be able to figure it out from just the blueprints. It's from my planet; I'm still trying to figure out how to replicate it myself."

The blue pendant glows in a beautiful, casting a soft illumination on Megamind's face.

"I wish I could show you the research," Megamind says, a note of wistfulness in his voice. "Maybe you'd be able to figure out how to replicate it."

Megamind smiles, soft and sweet, far softer than anyone should ever smile at Roxanne.

"Do you want to hold it for a while, Roxanne?" he asks.

 _(Definitely, definitely not really here. Megamind doesn't use her name like that.)_

He pulls the cord over his head and holds the pendant out to her. Roxanne manages to turn her hand over and he puts the pendant in it, closes her fingers over it.

It's cool to the touch, and it glows from between her fingers.

I wish you were real, Roxanne wants to say. _I wish you were really here. I wish I was someone else._

"Do you want me to read to you?" Megamind asks.

Roxanne can't answer, lets her eyes slip shut. She hears him pick up the book and open it.

His voice washes over her as he begins to read; she's past being able to understand any of the words, but the sound of his voice is soothing anyway.

* * *

 ** _...to be continued._**


	6. Chapter 6

Roxanne is sitting up in bed and drinking a glass of juice, feeling more like herself, the next time she sees him, lucid enough to know that he's real.

(she has only only vague memories of everything after she passed out wearing the collar, the distant sense of—Megamind having been there, but not really having been there, and of holding something made of blue light in her hand.)

"Well, well, well," Roxanne says, looking him up and down and arching an eyebrow. He's wearing street clothes; that's interesting—nice ones, too, black jeans and a charcoal-colored button up shirt. Did he stop here on his way to a date? "Aren't you all dressed up and looking pretty. To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from Metro City's resident superhero, Megamind?"

There's a tiny beat of silence before he responds, so small that Roxanne thinks maybe she imagined it. Then he smiles at her, raises his eyebrows.

"Just checking in on Metrocity's resident supervillain, Temptress," he says.

" _Metrocity_ ," Roxanne repeats thoughtfully. She leans back against her pillows. "I like that. I think I'll rename it that when I'm evil queen."

Megamind's expression does something complicated, like he's flattered but thinks he shouldn't be.

"Yes, well," he says dryly, "I don't believe you're going to be ruling anything from that hospital bed."

Roxanne narrows her eyes at him.

"I could," she says, a little sharply. "You couldn't stop me. No one can stop me."

"—please don't break out of here before your stitches heal," he says, and then grimaces as if he didn't mean to actually say that.

Roxanne's stomach does an unpleasant dropping thing. Is he—? Are her powers finally working on him? He sounds as if he's actually worried about her.

"Why, Megamind," she says, making her lips curve into a smile, and letting out a tentative curl of her pheromones, "I didn't know you cared."

"Stop that," he says, scrunching his face up in an expression that is very much _not_ the blind adoration of someone feeling the effects of her powers.

"—it really doesn't work on you," Roxanne says, letting the power dissipate. "Does it? Of all the people! It had to be _you_."

"Maybe it's destiny," he says.

Roxanne's breath catches.

Megamind gives her a sharp, sudden smile, tilts his head.

"You're the only reason they promoted me to full Defender, you know," he says. "Before you, I was very much second string."

Roxanne scowls at him.

"You are such a—a—an _unnecessary complication_ ," she says crossly.

Megamind laughs.

"Oh, but wouldn't absolute power be terribly boring?" he asks, smiling in an unexpectedly disarming way.

Roxanne fixes him with a glare, then lets her expression go smooth and imperious. She takes as regal a sip as one can from a paper cup of juice.

"I'll tell you after I've tried it, sweetheart," she says dryly.

Megamind flushes and Roxanne blinks in surprise. Really? Overt flirtation and pheromone powers don't do it, but _sweetheart_ does? She hadn't even bothered to sound seductive when she'd said it.

"—really, though," Megamind says, blush fading, "wait until the stitches are healed, Roxanne? Please? Minion says if you promise not to whammy him, he'll come by with cookies tomorrow," he adds enticingly.

Roxanne snorts, rolls her eyes, and waves a hand at him dismissively. At that moment, the prison doctor opens his office door and calls to Megamind, who goes into his office and shuts the door.

It's not until after Megamind has left the infirmary entirely that Roxanne realizes that he used her first name.

Like he had—when she'd—hallucinated him being there—

Had he really—?

Oh, but surely none of that had been real—

Roxanne frowns, hand going to her throat. No collar.

 _"—ever put it on her again, I will break her out of here myself—"_ she thinks she remembers Megamind's voice saying, which—

No. That couldn't be real. It can't be real.

—especially since she'd _asked him about the blueprints of the de-gun and essentially told him the location of her secret hideout above the library apartment; fuck—_

He would have said something; surely he would have said something if it had actually—

Roxanne clutches the rails of her hospital bed and tries to remember how to breathe.

She breaks out of the infirmary in a panic five minutes later.

* * *

She's expecting—she doesn't know what she's expecting, when she gets back home. A trap—all her things gone—Megamind there to arrest her—

But it's—nothing's been moved. Nothing's been changed. Her bed, her clothes, her plants; everything is where she left it. She drags herself around the room three times, checking minutely, just to be sure.

By the third time, she's too dizzy really to see straight, darkness at the edge of her vision, curling black clouds that billow like ink in water.

Roxanne barely makes it to her bed before losing consciousness.

When she wakes up, she has a raging fever, the wound in her side feels hot and itchy, and she is completely and utterly certain that she needs to water her plants.

—water—the—they need her; they'll die without her; they're—she has to get to them—

She crawls out of bed to the pitcher of water she keeps in the corner.

(she's desperately thirsty, but—the plants—can't—they need the water—)

She's never quite certain, afterwards, how long it takes her to drag herself, and the pitcher of water, across the room to the window. Roxanne remembers bits and pieces of the journey, but only bits and pieces. Finally she's there, lying on her good side, wound throbbing, looking at her plants.

Her hands fumble, weak and clumsy, with the pitcher; she doesn't quite have the strength to lift it.

The pitcher falls, spilling water onto the floor, soaking Roxanne's clothes, her hair, the side of her face, and she feels a sudden pulse of dismay and self-hatred and—

The darkness comes rolling in again.

* * *

"—plants—" Roxanne says.

She's no longer on the floor. Her legs are curled up a bit, her cheek leaning against something slightly more yielding than the floor, and her body bouncing in a way that's—

"Hush, Miss Ritchi; we're going to the hospital."

The meaning of the words filters into her brain—the—no—

She struggles weakly, trying to free herself.

"No—no—I have—I have to water—I have to water my plants—"

A noise of frustration above her.

"—plants—die without me—" she says, still twisting.

"I'll water your plants for you while you're in the hospital, Roxanne," Megamind says, voice gentle. "The plants will be fine."

He'll—

Roxanne relaxes into his arms.

Megamind.

Megamind will water the plants.

She gives a sigh of relief and closes her eyes.

* * *

When she's finally recovered enough to break out of the hospital and get back to her attic, Roxanne finds her plants green and well-watered and healthy.

There's a handmade sun lamp beside them, shining down on them.

Nothing else in the attic has been touched.

* * *

 ** _...to be continued._**

* * *

 **Day 20 of my Birthday Fic Month-I hope you are all still enjoying it! Thank you so much for continuing to read and review.**


	7. Chapter 7

Things—change, after that.

It's not—it's not that either of them stop trying so hard to win, but it's—

The traps she sets for him are less deadly, meant not to kill or injure, but to—to demonstrate her victory over him. Paint bombs and glitter, trapping him in cages and leaving him for other people to find. Things like that.

Megamind stops using the debilitate and dehydrate settings of the de-gun on her after he catches her. Even when he captures her with dehydration, he always rehydrates her before taking her to prison. When he takes her in, it's handcuffs only, which makes it easier for her to escape, but also makes the game much more—much more _up-close and exciting._

She gets an apartment. A real, actual apartment, with windows and a door with lots of locks, and a bed, a real bed, and real sunlight for her plants.

(she brings the sunlamp along, too, though, for—winter, and for cloudy days. not—not for any other reason.)

Roxanne still goes to the library sometimes, but only in the daytime, in disguise. She—for some reason she is afraid to let herself go there at night when it's closed. She tells herself that she's being pragmatic, avoiding the possibility of running into Megamind when they'll be alone there.

She can't quite shake the nagging feeling that her avoidance is due to fear, rather than pragmatism.

Which is—ridiculous; she's not afraid of Megamind. she's—she has a healthy respect for him as an opponent, but she's not—

(Megamind standing beside the bookshelves looking at that poster of the lighthouse, Roxanne hiding in the shadows, and what if she stepped out, what if he turned and saw her, what if—)

 _((I want that))_

No no no; you can't want that; you can't want things like that, can't want

 _(him)_

you can't want him you can't

 _you know what happens when you want things, Roxanne._

(it's not Megamind she's afraid of)

* * *

He's actually there, at the library, one day, when she's there; she sees him and her heart gives a panicked, painful leap, but she keeps a tight hold on her powers, and he doesn't turn and see her. There are people between them. Not many, but—enough that Roxanne can suppress her need to run, can feel as if she's camouflaged enough, just another citizen of— _Metrocity_ , browsing for books at the library.

Megamind selects a few books and checks them out; Roxanne trails him through the library, then follows him as he leaves.

She knows where he lives, of course, or—where he supposedly lives; Roxanne has noticed that he doesn't actually spend a great deal of time at 'his apartment'. She's suspected for a while that he has a secret hideout of some kind.

Not realizing he's being trailed, he leads her to it, now, going down into the old industrial district, and then disappearing through a holographic wall into one of the abandoned warehouses. Roxanne waits on a nearby rooftop, chewing her lip, for fifteen minutes, then climbs down and goes to the wall.

Rather to her surprise, she's able to walk through it, too—huh; interesting oversight; she would have thought Megamind would have known to code the technology to only let the people he wanted into his home.

Inside is—

It's a little like what she imagines their attic must have looked like, when he lived there; plans and equations scribbled on the walls and written on scraps of paper that hang from the ceiling on string, arranged like some kind of mobiles, like artwork. Half-constructed machines and chalkboards and scientific equipment.

Roxanne has a bit of a start when she feels something nudge her elbow. She looks down and—

 _"Bowg."_

" _Shh_ ," Roxanne says to the brainbot who—she's pretty sure this is the one Megamind calls— " _Shh_ , Spikeless. Roxanne's playing a game with Daddy, and she needs you to be a good bot and keep quiet."

 _"Bowg."_ The mechanical bark this time is just a whisper.

Roxanne laughs softly and strokes her hand over the dome of the brainbot.

She's careful to keep hidden as she explores, but it's a very large warehouse and she never actually sees Megamind there. The brainbot follows her around, but, obediently, is very quiet for her.

The wallpaper in the kitchen of Megamind's secret hideout is the same as the wallpaper in the kitchen of the library apartment.

Roxanne stands in the kitchen for a few minutes, heart twisting inexplicably, then—

"Spikeless, can you bring me a pen and paper?" she says quietly. "And tape."

Roxanne pulls her apartment key out of her purse—she has another at home; she'll just have to break in when she gets back to her apartment this time—and then also pulls out a lipstick, Temptress red.

She hesitates only a moment before scribbling the address down on the paper. She tapes the key to the page. Then she paints her lips with the lipstick and presses her lips to the paper, leaving a scarlet lip print.

Roxanne folds up the paper.

"I want you to wait three hours," Roxanne says, "and then I want you to give this to Daddy, Spikeless. Don't tell him how you got it. Can you do that for Roxanne?"

 _"Bowg."_

"There's a sweet little cyborg," Roxanne says, stroking Spikeless again.

* * *

It's not a stupid thing to do. It's not.

What if—what if she gets shot again; _what if that!_

Who's going to water her plants if Megamind doesn't know where she lives? No one! So clearly it's not a stupid thing to do! An action motivated completely by logic!

* * *

 _(liar liar liar)_

* * *

He doesn't say anything about it, the next battle, but he does have Spikeless with him, for no apparent reason. The brainbot is, of course, wildly excited to see her.

Roxanne, laughing, blows a kiss to the little bot as she escapes.

* * *

Life goes on in the usual way.

And things—

Things are—

Things are _not awful._

And she gets used to it. She gets used to things being not awful.

So used to it that it actually takes her by _surprise_ when, after having invited her down to the club he runs to 'discuss their mutual interests', the superpowered villain Psycho Delic uses his smoke powers on her.

The pink smoke clouds the room, curling from Psycho Delic, curling around Roxanne in tendrils of—

 _(—desire—oh god—oh god, she wants—wants—wants—)_

"That's it," Psycho says, slow grin in the pink smoke, "you know you want it. I can give you what you want, beautiful."

 _(beautiful beautiful you're so beautiful)_

(the people in the hall of the school the people all around her she can't get away from them someone using her against the bathroom stall and someone grabbing her wrist and not letting go and no no NO NO)

 _"No!"_

Her power explodes out from her with the scream, all of her power, all at once; Psycho convulses, choking and jerking, little rivulets of blood slipping from the corners of his eyes.

 _"Kill yourself kill yourself get away from me stay away from me—"_ Roxanne says, voice high and words rapid with terror.

Psycho Delic jerks to his feet like a puppet, bleeding from his eyes, turns stiffly, and goes to the window.

He breaks the glass.

And then he cuts his throat.

Roxanne runs, out through the club, powers out of control, pulsing out of her like

 _(blood from an artery oh god oh)_

She can't stop the torrential flow of her powers, all her control gone, desire and panic too tangled up in her mind, her terror and the pink smoke, and all of Psycho's people get hit by her pheromones, all of their eyes going glazed, all of them coming closer, reaching out for her, trying to touch her and—

 _(can't get away from them can't)_

"Get away from me!" Roxanne screams, throwing all of her power behind the command. "Get away from me; stay away from me!"

* * *

She runs.

Roxanne runs, not to her apartment (too many windows _not safe not safe_ ) but to the library, to her little attic.

She's sobbing as she scrabbles at her clothes, tearing them off, even the horror and panic she feels not enough to drown out the hot insistent need that claws at her insides.

There's nothing left up here, no pillows, no nest of blankets; Roxanne drops to her knees, cups her own breasts with ungentle hands, fingers digging into her flesh. She twists her nipples viciously, the pain a cruel kind of pleasure.

She shoves her hand between her legs, fingers rough against her clit. Her hips jerk, thrusting her against her fingers harder, and she makes a wordless sobbing sound.

Roxanne braces her free hand against the wall, her palm against one of Megamind's equations, numbers in his handwriting visible between her fingers.

She comes with a scream.

* * *

Her powers are depleted after Psycho's club; it's not even Megamind who captures her, but Metro Man.

Everyone is really very full of _righteous moral outrage_ at the horribly violent killing of Psycho Delic; Roxanne sits dully in her cell while they express their horror and condemnation at her. She can't find it in herself to care. Not until—

"Why did you do it?"

Roxanne, staring listlessly down at the backs of her hands, looks up at Megamind's voice. He's standing on the other side of the bars, with Minion and Metro Man on either side of him. He looks—there's a kind of flatness to his expression that she's never seen before, and the sight of it hurts her more than any of the terrible things anyone else has said.

She doesn't answer, just looks back down.

"This is a waste of time," Metro Man says, sounding disgusted. "You saw it, buddy, there's no reason that could—"

Roxanne lashes out, sharp and fast, with her power.

 _"Stop talking."_

Metro Man's words cut off abruptly, and she hears Minion make a sound of alarm, hears Megamind's breath hiss between his teeth.

"Let him go," Megamind says, sounding furious.

Roxanne does.

She looks up at Megamind again, then rises slowly to her feet, the move as sensually threatening as she can make it. Megamind glares at her.

"Sir, I really think—" Minion says, "—I—Sir, maybe we should go—"

Megamind ignores him, takes a step closer to the bars, and Roxanne walks forward, hips swaying and chin up, an alluring smile curling her lips. She comes right up to the bars.

"Sweetheart," she says, voice sweet and cruel at the same time. His breath hisses through his teeth again. "Why do you care why I did it?"

She shifts her weight provocatively onto one hip, reaches out and curls one hand slowly around a bar, draws her fingertips up another, looks up at him through her lashes.

"You saw it, didn't you?" she says. "Do you really think any reason I could give would justify _that?"_

She lets her pheromone power curl out from her—doesn't do anything with it, doesn't use it on his sidekicks, just lets him feel it, makes him feel it.

(see what I am?)

"Stop it," Megamind says in a low voice, eyes on her face.

"Stop what?" Roxanne raises an eyebrow. "Stop being evil? Megamind, sweetheart, I've tried." She smiles at him. "I've afraid it's just in my nature."

"You're avoiding the question," Megamind says softly.

Roxanne snarls.

"Do you think you can make me be sorry?" She leans forward, baring her teeth, gripping the bars tightly. " _I'm not sorry._ That piece of shit is never going to do that to another girl again, and _I'm not fucking sorry._ "

Megamind's eyes widen, and Roxanne has a sick moment of realizing what she's said, realizing what she's told him. She covers her panic with a sweetly cruel smile.

"He tried to use that pink smoke on me," she says, voice lilting. "You know the one I'm talking about, don't you, sweetheart? The aphrodisiac one. The one that makes you so desperate to fuck that you'll screw anything in sight. He tried to use it on me."

Megamind takes a sharp breath.

"How is that any different from what you do?" Metro Man says.

Roxanne hisses, striking out with her power like a lash.

 _"Stop breathing."_

Minion makes a sound of alarm and Metro Man claws at his throat, mouth opening and closing soundlessly, his eyes, fixed on Roxanne in an expression of adoration, bulging in his face.

"Roxanne, stop," Megamind says, reaching out and putting his hand over hers.

A jolt of shock like lightning goes through Roxanne at the touch.

She releases Metro Man, and he gasps for breath, leaning on Minion.

"That," she snarls at Metro Man, " _that_ is the difference. I might kill people but I never make them fuck me, first."

"I'm so sorry," Megamind says.

Roxanne looks at him again.

"Sorry?" she says, frowning in confusion. "Sorry for what?"

Megamind closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again to look at her. And his expression is—

"I'll get the charge changed to manslaughter," he says. "You can plead self-defense."

Roxanne stares at him, then bursts into wild laughter. She pulls her hand from beneath his and lets go of the bars, steps back from them, shaking her head, still laughing uncontrollably.

A look of frustration crosses Megamind's face, and then Minion is pulling at his arm.

"Sir—Sir—it's time to go, I think—"

"Yeah," Metro Man says, "I'm pretty sure the maniacal laughter is our _exit cue_ , buddy; can we please leave before she tries to kill me again?"

Roxanne collapses, laughing, onto her cot. Megamind's look of frustration deepens, then he growls and lets go of the bars, lets Minion and Metro Man pull him away down the hall.

* * *

He does get the charge changed to manslaughter, which is—really quite sweet, especially since Roxanne is pretty sure they both know she's never going to stay in prison long enough to stand trial.

* * *

Still.

Very sweet.

* * *

Which is—

* * *

(fuck)

* * *

(FUCK _FUCK **FUCK**_ )

* * *

 _...to be continued._

* * *

 **Day 22 of my Birthday Fic Month. Thank you all for reading and reviewing!**


	8. Chapter 8

Roxanne lies low for almost a month after escaping, tells herself that it's because she wants to make sure the furor over Psycho Delic dies down before risking any chance of getting arrested again.

She watches the news a lot. Megamind gives an interview detailing some of Psycho's more unsavory crimes, hinting heavily that the city is safer without him in it.

"This is ridiculous," Roxanne tells her favorite houseplant, the large and luxurious succulent who she has recently named Cyril. "There is no reason to avoid him."

(Roxanne's hand pressed to his equation on the wall, Megamind's hand over hers on the bars)

"Fucking hell," she says, to the houseplant.

* * *

She goes to the library again and researches supervillains once more, but just as she suspected, none of the books have any solutions to offer to the problem of

 _help I've fallen in love with my nemesis and I can't get up._

There is a lot of very racy fiction in that vein, though, which is _very extremely entirely unhelpful thanks._

* * *

In exasperation with herself, she launches a fairly pointless but spectacularly showy supervillain plot centered around threatening to destroy a very large statue commemorating a bit of local history—an unpleasant man who, by all accounts, behaved very badly towards his wife and children, but who also donated a great deal of money to public works in Metrocity, so everyone pretends he was a swell guy.

Megamind is actually just _slightly too slow_ to stop her from detonating the bombs.

She almost suspects him of having let her destroy the statue on purpose—as he handcuffs her, he glances over at the rubble with a rather satisfied gleam in his eye and a smile hovering around the edges of his mouth.

* * *

Roxanne escapes from prison.

* * *

And everything—everything goes back to normal.

* * *

"See, Cyril?" Roxanne says, "I told you there was nothing to worry about."

* * *

Roxanne continues to watch the news frequently; it's interesting to her even when she's not featured.

"And not only because he's on so often," she tells Cyril.

(Cyril seems to give her a deeply unconvinced look.)

* * *

"So, Metro Man, Megamind," the interviewer says enthusiastically, "It's so good of you to come to the opening of Metro City's new public elementary school! I'm sure you both have fond memories from your own school days!"

"Uh—yeah," Metro Man says, looking a little uncomfortable, "I uh—I definitely had a lot of fun—"

"No," Megamind says.

The interviewer blinks, professional smile wavering.

"I—no?" she says.

"No," Megamind says flatly. "I do not have any fond memories of shool."

The interviewer seems to be at a loss for a response.

"But—but didn't you two go to school together?" the woman manages finally.

"Uh—" Metro Man looks rather uncomfortable. "That's—uh—"

"Briefly," Megamind says.

The interviewer glances between the two of them helplessly, clearly wishing she might get the signal to go to commercial immediately.

"I was…kind of a jerk," Metro Man says, now looking really deeply uncomfortable.

Megamind shoots him a dryly amused sidelong look, then sighs, clearly relenting.

"It wasn't as if you were the only one, Wayne," he says, much more gently that Roxanne thinks Metro Man deserves. "And you were a child."

"Buddy—"

"Right!" the interviewer says, brightly, recognizing a cue. "That's why it's always important to tell a your teacher if you're being bullied at school, kids!"

Megamind gives a snort of laughter and Metro Man winces.

"Unless of course the teacher is the one bullying you," Megamind says, mouth twisting.

"…Okay! Back to you in the studio, Dan!" the interviewer says, with the air of a woman who has just realized that it's time for a career change.

Roxanne, watching the interview as she cares for her plants, grips the watering can very tightly.

* * *

There is really something, Roxanne thinks, a month later, very satisfying about journalism.

If she hadn't had to become a supervillain, perhaps she could have become a reporter. That would have been—

(she pushes the impossible thought away)

The plan hadn't been very difficult to put into motion, just a bit time consuming—finding Megamind and Metro Man's school records, tracking down all the people who had been enrolled in that first school with them.

Charming them all, with a subtle twist of pheromones, into describing, on camera, exactly how they'd treated Megamind and how _very extremely sorry they are now._

She'd tracked down the teacher last of all, and done the same thing to her. That woman hadn't been sorry, and Roxanne hadn't wanted to push too hard with the pheromones to force her say it anyway. It was important that no one know of the Temptress' involvement; she'd been very careful not to show herself on camera, or to film anyone while they were _visibly_ affected by her powers.

But she hadn't really needed an apology from Miss Simmons, in any case.

Roxanne had cut the footage together, put it on a tape, and then sent the tape to her favorite of the television reporters she regularly watched—a young blonde woman who was always assigned fluff pieces, and who was clearly frustrated with it.

They won't, Roxanne thinks with satisfaction, be assigning her fluff pieces anymore.

The young blonde journalist does all Roxanne hopes for and more with the tape—the recording airs on her channel first, and then on every channel.

Miss Simmons is fired from her administrative position at a private school, and is publicly ostracized.

(Her house is egged multiple times, she's constantly prank called, her car is keyed—Roxanne isn't the only one with an _affection_ for Metrocity's blue Defender.)

Eventually the woman is forced to move out of the city, although, Roxanne knows, she's going to have a very hard time escaping from the bad publicity. The video is on the internet, now; they even show it on some national networks.

Megamind appears to be rather baffled and overwhelmed by the attention and support. So—eternally surprised at it.

(Does he not realize how loved he is?)

* * *

"Thank you," Megamind says, the next time he arrests her.

"For what, sweetheart?" Roxanne says, raising her eyebrows at him, heart suddenly pounding.

 _(he doesn't know; he can't know; he can't find out—)_

"I—" Megamind stops, and shakes his head, glances away, smiling slightly.

Roxanne takes the opportunity to slip her handcuffs and escape.

* * *

Things…continue.

* * *

Things continue much as normal right up until the battle that Megamind gets shot.

She's robbing the bank when it happens, all of the tellers and guards under her control, Megamind there to stop her as usual.

It's her fault; it's all her fault. She's so wrapped up in the banter with Megamind that she stops paying attention to how much pheromone power she's emitting. And she's—well.

She's noticed lately that her powers are sometimes spiking involuntarily.

When she's around him.

Which is—anyway; it happens this time; Megamind says something particularly clever, biting his lip and smiling that sharp, maddening smile of his, and Roxanne's pheromones spike accidentally.

And one of the guards is so overcome with artificial adoration for her that he takes it upon himself to _shoot Megamind._

Megamind makes a soft noise, blood blooming blacker on his black suit, and then he falls and—

—and Roxanne has her hands pressed against his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, and his blood is all over her hands and there's too much of it and she's—

She pulls his gun from its holster and dehydrates him.

The Temptress bursts through the doors of Metro City hospital in an explosion of pheromones that instantly has everyone within the entire radius of the hospital under her control.

"Fix him," Roxanne says to the surgeon. She rehydrates Megamind on the operating table. "Fix him _right now."_

* * *

She holds the entire hospital in thrall for six and a half hours; by the time the surgeon tells her that Megamind is stable and expected to recover, she's in agony from the power expenditure, shaking, her body twitching in tiny, involuntary jerks.

* * *

It takes her powers a long time to come back after that. Roxanne has to sneak into the hospital without them, at odd times, only daring to stay for an hour at most each time.

He doesn't wake up, any of the times she sneaks in to sit at his bedside.

* * *

She takes one of Cyril's leaves, puts it in a separate pot, waters it.

She leaves it at Megamind's bedside one night while he's sleeping.

 _sorry you almost died because of me; have a houseplant_

jesus, she's a mess.

* * *

It takes him entirely too long to recover, but eventually he does recover.

"I'm not—made of glass—you know," Megamind says, blocking a kick from her during their third battle after he's back. "You can stop—pulling your punches."

"I have—no idea what you mean—sweetheart," Roxanne says, and swings an elbow at him (just slightly slower than she usually would).

Megamind grabs her elbow, twists her around, and traps her against the wall.

"No?" he says, sharp smile inches from her own lips. "You sure about that, Temptress?"

Roxanne takes a sharp breath, pheromones spiking involuntarily, and Megamind's gaze falls to her mouth and there is an

 _utterly terrifying instant_

in which she thinks he wants to kiss her, is about to kiss her, is—

Roxanne panics and headbutts him.

" _Fuck_ ," Megamind hisses in pain, stumbling back, but he's laughing, even as he says it, and that's pretty much the end of Roxanne pulling her punches.

* * *

"I'm imagining things," Roxanne tells Cyril. "They don't work on him."

Cyril, as always, is silent.

* * *

The art museum hosts a collection of native american artifacts, the legal ownership of which is in dispute—the private collector agreeing to its display there but not its return to the tribe.

Megamind must have been tipped off (or else he just knows her too well) because he arrives before she's finished robbing the museum.

"Megamind," Roxanne says, moving around a display case warily, keeping it between the two of them. "We have to stop meeting like this. People will talk."

He's wearing one of his smaller mechanical battlesuits, one that fits him like armor and makes him able to fly.

It makes him slower, too, though.

He turns the jet boots on, kicks up into the air, and Roxanne moves, sudden and without hesitation, drawing her gun and shooting the sole of one boot. He gives a noise of surprised alarm and wobbles in the air, held up precariously by his single undamaged boot, arms too busy windmilling for balance to draw his gun.

Roxanne shoots the other boot.

He falls out of the air, landing with a clang of metal on the museum's tile floor.

It isn't a long drop, and he rolls to his feet quickly—though not as quickly as usual.

"So slow," Roxanne says, malicious and gleeful. "Too slow."

He goes to draw his gun, but the joints of the suit aren't quite quick and supple enough to let him complete the motion before Roxanne shoots the joint of the suit's elbow. The joint freezes up and Roxanne laughs.

"Much, much too slow!"

Megamind makes a noise of frustration and hits a button on the suit that makes it fall away from his body in pieces. He reaches across his body and draws his gun with his left hand just before the leg piece clangs to the floor.

"My, my; aren't we eager to undress," Roxanne says.

"Only for you," Megamind says, grinning at her, and Roxanne very nearly runs into the pillar she's trying to dodge behind because holy fuck he's never flirted back so blatantly before.

She fires three shots quickly, but Megamind has taken refuge behind another pillar. Roxanne pulls back into the cover of her pillar just in time as Megamind fires at her. She runs to a nearby display case, trying to get behind him and gain the upper hand, but Megamind appears to have had the same idea, because he goes for the display case, too, a split second expression of surprise on his face when they almost run into each other.

Roxanne kicks out, but he blocks it, along with one of her next two punches, and then he tries to grab her. She goes with the motion, throwing him so off-balance that she's able to spin past his body and out of his arms, almost as if they're dancing.

She turns, raising the gun swiftly, aiming it at him, but Megamind turns and raises his own gun at the same time.

There's a pause of several tense moments in which both of them continue to aim at each other at nearly point blank range.

If one of them fires, the other one will still have time to pull the trigger before the stun or dehydration happens.

Neither of them fires, neither of them lowers their gun. They circle each other slowly, countering each other's movements, neither of them able to gain the advantage of a slightly better shot.

"Just out of curiosity, Temptress," Megamind says, "what are you planning on doing with those artifacts?"

"Giving them back to their owners," she says, too caught off guard to be anything but truthful.

He stops circling. Roxanne stops circling also, again caught off guard.

Megamind, with an abrupt motion, stops aiming at her, twirls his gun around his finger and catches it by the barrel, then tosses it at her.

Roxanne reaches up and catches it reflexively.

"Oh no," he says. "I appear to have been disarmed. How very unfortunate." He raises an eyebrow at her. "Doubtless I'm about to be captured and—regrettably—rendered completely powerless to stop you."

Roxanne laughs, shock and delight and—

He's so—he's so very _good_. And she—

(loves him god she loves him she loves him so much, and how can it be possible that something as evil and unclean as her could love someone so blindingly good)

She holsters her gun, and Megamind grins at her, sharp-edged and shining. He reaches for the handcuffs on his belt, tosses them at her, too.

Roxanne handcuffs him to a convenient statue, his hands behind his back,.

(the position makes the tendons in his long, slender neck stand out in a fascinating way.)

"I'm keeping the gun this time, sweetheart," Roxanne says softly, standing close to him, her hand on his chest.

"That's all right," he murmurs. "I figured you would. I finally realized how to replicate the power source."

Surprise makes her control slip, and her powers give a quick little pulse.

Megamind glances down at her mouth, then up into her eyes, his pupils wide and dark and—

She doesn't kiss him, then.

(but it is a very near fucking thing.)

* * *

"—can we not?"

Roxanne, about to dive for the freeze ray, stops—less at Megamind's words and more at the tone. He sounds—

Tired and dull, and there are dark circles under his eyes, beneath the eyeliner.

"…time out?" Roxanne says uncertainly, making the shape with her hands that she remembers from games of tag as a kid.

That seems so long ago, seems like it happened to another person. Not the person here on the rooftop with Megamind.

He closes his eyes for a moment, lets out a breath, his shoulders curving inwards.

"Thank you," he says, sounding honestly grateful, and so very tired.

"You look terrible," Roxanne blurts out. "Are you sick?"

(she wouldn't have done the evil plot on a cold snowy rooftop if she'd known he was ill, probably wouldn't have done an evil plot at all, to be completely honest, even if it is Christmas, even if the _peace on earth goodwill towards man_ sentiment of the season does get under her skin and make her feel particularly bitter and evil and destructive.)

Megamind chokes on a laugh.

"No," he says, "I'm— _fuck_."

He covers his face with his hand and turns away from her, his legs folding up suddenly as he crumples.

Roxanne stands frozen in place, staring at his back, as his shoulders do that silent convulsive jerking thing that happens when you're trying not to cry.

She should—she should go, she should definitely go, she should—

She goes to him and sits down next to him on the rooftop. He takes a sharp breath—surprise, she thinks, but she doesn't look over at him, fixes her eyes out on the skyline, on the shapes of buildings and roofs dimly visible through the thickly falling snow.

They stay like that for several minutes, neither of them saying anything.

"This is the day my planet was destroyed," Megamind says, quietly, breaking the silence. "This is the anniversary."

Roxanne's breath hisses through her teeth; she looks over at him. He's looking out at the skyline now.

"There was a black hole," he says, "and the whole planet was pulled into it. Everyone but me and Minion. I was an infant, but I remember it perfectly. I remember everything."

There is a long silence in which Roxanne does not know what to say.

"I think my family's dead," she says abruptly. "I think they killed them. The people that had me. I think they killed them."

Megamind turns to her, anger and grief twisted together in his expression.

"This universe really _sucks_ , doesn't it?" he says, with so much force behind the words that it strikes Roxanne as funny for some awful reason.

She makes a choked sound, laughter edged with tears, and then both of them are laughing, the kind of laughter that comes of trying not to cry.

"Oh, it does!" Roxanne says. "It really, really does!"

"Error: universe. Reboot from start," Megamind says, giggling, tears in his eyes. "Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?"

"Don't—don't give me _ideas!_ " Roxanne says, gasping with laughter.

"Don't t-tempt me to _let you!_ " Megamind says, laughing.

They laugh for a few more moments before trailing off once more into silence. Megamind doesn't turn away, though, keeps looking at her, an odd expression on his face.

"Can't we just—can't we just stay like this?" he asks. "Can't we just stop?"

"No," Roxanne says, all of her leftover joy vanishing. "I can't. I told you; I can't."

"Why not?" Megamind says, sounding frustrated.

"You _know_ why not," Roxanne says, chest tightening. "I told you—you've seen—the things I've done, the things I can do, the—"

"It was self defense," Megamind says.

 _"I wasn't talking about that time, Megamind,"_ Roxanne says, hands clenching into fists.

"Neither was I," Megamind says softly.

Roxanne stares at him. Is he—does he actually know what she's talking about? Does he know what she did, not just to Psycho Delic, but to all the people from the lab, all of the blood, the guard she shot, the people she made kill themselves, bodies falling onto the grass like puppets with cut strings—

They're sitting very close, Roxanne realizes. Realizes, too that her pheromone powers have begun to curl out from her without her noticing.

Too close, much too close, this is—

"Roxanne," Megamind says, voice quiet, expression soft and filled with— _no please, no—_

Roxanne jerks herself to her feet, feeling as if a terrible yawning darkness has opened up inside her chest.

" _That_ ," she hisses. _"That is fucking why."_

"Roxanne—"

She flees.

* * *

"No no no no no no no," Roxanne says, curled into a ball on her kitchen floor, "no, no, please, god, no—"

Maybe—maybe she's—maybe it wasn't the pheromones, she thinks desperately. Maybe it was just—circumstances; he was feeling unhappy and vulnerable, and Roxanne was there, managing to be at least a little nice to him, and it was just—circumstances, not her. He would have wanted to kiss anyone who was there with him, then, being nice to him.

It's—it's perfectly natural that he would feel that way, isn't it; people get sad, they want held; that's a thing, isn't it?

It wasn't her. It can't have been her.

 _(please, please, no)_

* * *

 ** _...to be continued._**

* * *

 **Day 24 of my Birthday Fic Month! Thank you for continuing to read and send reviews; I really appreciate them!**

 **Megamind's "Error: universe; reboot from start," line is a discworld reference.**

 **Thank you to Mollyscribbles on tumblr for inspiring the part where the Temptress finds out about Megamind's school experiences and gets revenge on his behalf.**


	9. Chapter 9

She throws herself into supervillainy, executes evil plots rapidly, trying, now, to avoid direct contact with Megamind as much as she can, keeping her powers locked down so tightly she gives herself a constant headache.

It wasn't her. The universe cannot possibly be that cruel.

(that thought almost sets her off into hysterical laughter.)

Roxanne doesn't have much faith in the universe's benevolence.

* * *

They're outside the library when it happens.

 _(of course. of course they fucking are.)_

The two of them are fighting in an alley, the kind of up close, physical fight that Roxanne has been trying so desperately to avoid. He aims the de-gun at her, almost gets a shot in, but she dodges and kicks, knocking the gun from his hand. She shoves him back against the brick wall, her own gun beneath his chin, and—

Their bodies are pressed together, their faces so close, both of them panting, and Roxanne can't keep her powers from pulsing at the nearness of him and then Megamind's gaze drops to her mouth and—

She breaks.

Roxanne kisses him.

She presses her lips hard to his and licks into his mouth, the last bit of her control snapping as he makes a wanting sound against her lips and clutches her and kisses her back.

When she finally forces herself to end the kiss, his eyes stay closed for a moment before fluttering open, before he looks at her.

Her lipstick is on his mouth, a scarlet mark like blood. He gasps for breath and looks at her with those impossible green eyes of his and Roxanne _slams_ the walls of her control down as hard as she can and smiles at him as the Temptress instead of Roxanne.

"Aren't you pretty when you're breathless," she says, instead of screaming.

* * *

Roxanne breaks every mirror in her apartment that night, unable to stand the sight of her own reflection.

She wants to die. She wants to die so very badly.

She can think of twelve different ways to make that happen, just off the top of her head.

Would Megamind take care of her houseplants if she killed herself?

Something in her won't let her do it, though; the part of her that holds onto life with its fingernails and screams, the same part of her that got her out of the lab, that drove her to supervillainy as a way to be safe, the part of her that just _won't stop fighting_

god she hates that part of herself.

* * *

What's funny, what's really supremely fucking hilarious is that Roxanne can have whatever she wants, now. There's no one to stop her.

( _wouldn't absolute power be terribly boring?_ he asked her once, and she'd said _I'll tell you after I've tried it, sweetheart_ )

Absolute power isn't boring, it turns out. It's agony.

* * *

The Temptress continues her usual acts of supervillainy, making sure to avoid contact with Megamind, now.

The Temptress leaves him bombs and tricks and traps and riddles.

The Temptress leaves Megamind a note with a lipstick print, writes _stay pretty_ , sweetheart.

(instead of what Roxanne wants to write which is _I love you I love you I'm so sorry_.)

* * *

She's going to have to leave. She's going to have to leave this city; she can't stay here, can't be this close to him.

Roxanne means that last _stay pretty_ note as a goodbye when she writes it, but after the last plan, when she's sitting in the middle of her apartment, with her plant Cyril next to her, trying dully to decide what else in her apartment she cares about about enough to take with her—

She has to—she _has to see him._

One more time. Just one more time. One more time, to say goodbye in person.

She goes as the Temptress; she can't bear to go as Roxanne. Her most beautifully seductive outfit, a cape, red lipstick like blood.

 _Roxanne_ can't kiss him, but the _Temptress_ has kissed plenty of people, red lipstick prints left behind like a signature.

(One last kiss to remember her by.)

* * *

He's alone in his hideout when she arrives; even the brainbots are gone. She walks in the shadows, looking for—

Her breath catches.

 _Megamind_.

He's working on one of his battlesuits, kneeling with a wrench in his hand, his head bent. She watches him for a few moments, memorizing him, pressing this sight of him into her memory as hard and as deeply as she can.

She sees the moment that he realizes he's being watched, sees him go still, his posture suddenly tense.

Well.

Looks like it's time for the Temptress to do what she does best.

Roxanne steps out of the shadows, lips curled into a smile. He looks up at her sharply, his eyes going wide.

"Temptress," he breathes.

( _Temptress_ , not _Roxanne_ , and that hurts, oh it does, but it's better like this. She doesn't know what she would have done if he had called her by her name.)

He drops the wrench and scrambles to his feet, stumbles back from her—oh. oh that's not—is he _afraid_ of her? actually _afraid_ of her?

(how many pieces can her heart break into? she ground the mirrors in her apartment down to powder when she broke them; perhaps hearts break like that, too.)

The Temptress' smile stays on her lips; Roxanne walks forward with the Temptress' walk.

Megamind's back hits the wall and she makes her smile widen as she catches both his wrists in her hands, pulls them above his head, pins them to the wall there. He lets her do it, doesn't fight her at all, and he really must be afraid of her, because Roxanne hasn't even used her powers yet.

He can't even look at her.

"Megamind," she murmurs, "we meet again."

 _(come on, Megamind, take your cue, please take it)_

He turns his head away, eyes still closed.

She shifts her grip on his wrists, so that she's holding both of them in one of her hands, now, trails gloved fingertips down the side of his throat, testing—

He shudders.

"That's new," she says, wanting to scream, "you've never been afraid of me, before."

Megamind swallows visibly.

"What are you scared of, sweetheart?" she asks, leaning close to brush her lips against his ear. _(if she is damned she is going to be damned properly)_ "Are you afraid I'm going to kiss you again?"

She lets just the smallest bit of her powers out as she nuzzles just beneath his ear.

(god his skin is so soft; he smells so good)

"Are you afraid you'll fall in love with me if I do?" she whispers.

"—too late," Megamind says.

Which is exactly what she wanted and did not want to hear, and she kisses him again.

Last time, one last time, and she moves her hand from his wrists and laces her fingers with his and she lets her powers spike, because, god, if she's going to make him kiss her, she's at least going to make sure he _enjoys_ it and—

Megamind pushes her away.

"Don't," he hisses.

Roxanne stumbles back, confusion making her head spin. How—but—?

She sends out another pulse of power towards him.

"Stop it," he says, sounding furious, "that doesn't work on me."

Doesn't—doesn't—

It doesn't—but—but it does; it does work; she's seen it working; she's seen it—

She lunges for him, needing to see—tilts his chin up so she can look into his eyes, and his pupils are blown and she sees how fast he's breathing, sees the way he parts his lips at her touch, and that is all—

"But you are attracted to me," she says. "I can tell!"

"Yeah, I am," Megamind snaps. He jerks himself out of her grip and steps away from her, his arms crossed defensively over his chest.

"You let me kiss you!" Roxanne says. "Twice!"

"Yeah," Megamind says, voice flat, "I did."

"You said that you _loved_ me!" Roxanne bursts out.

Megamind flinches at that, his shoulders curving inwards. He looks down at the floor.

"Can we please not talk about that?" he asks, his voice small and vulnerable.

"…was that…" Roxanne stares at him, feeling as if the world has suddenly started spinning in the opposite direction, "but that had to be the pheromones."

It had to be; what other possible explanation could there be for—

He looks up at her sharply, and his expression—

That's—

 _(—that's not possible; that's not possible; it's not)_

"Do you—do you mean you actually just— _like_ me?" she says, utterly bewildered. "As a _person_?"

"Oh, come on; how could I not?!" Megamind bursts out. He gestures wildly at her. "You're—brilliant and you're funny and you're—so much—kinder than you pretend to be and you—you treat the brainbots like they're alive and—you're—"

He gestures again.

She stares at him.

"…you didn't even say beautiful," she says.

"—yes, beautiful, that too, obviously," he says, dragging his hands over his face.

"No," Roxanne says, moving towards him, staring at him, not daring to blink for fear he'll disappear, "I mean—beautiful—that's what everybody always says, when I ask them. They always—beautiful is the only thing people ever say, the only reason they ever—"

She reaches out for him again and he watches her warily but he lets her do it, lets her touch his face gently, lets her hold it in her hands.

Is that—

—is that really _him_ letting her do this? Is that _Megamind_ letting her do this?

"The pheromones really still don't work on you?" she breathes.

"No," he says quietly. "No, they don't."

"I thought…"

She spikes her powers violently, as strong as she can make them go, watches his face as she does it, and his expression—there's no blankness that comes into his eyes.

Roxanne drops her powers.

"Nothing?" she says.

He shakes his head, gently enough not to dislodge her hands from his face and—

 _oh._

It's like light bursting in her heart, bursting all around her; this beautiful impossible thing that she's wanted so badly for so long; he loves her; her powers don't work on him they don't work on him and _Megamind actually loves her._

She kisses him again and he wraps his arm around her waist and touches her jaw lightly with the fingertips of his other hand and this is happening; it's actually happening.

Roxanne breaks the kiss.

"—let me keep you," she says. She presses a line of fluttering kisses up his jaw, feverish and desperate, "Let me keep you; stay with me. Let me love you, let me make you my king; we can rule this city, you know we can; together we'd be unstoppable—"

"I know—" Megamind says, turning his head and pressing a kiss to her hair, "I know we would; that's why—that's why I can't—"

"Please," she begs. "Please, Megamind, please—"

"Roxanne—Roxanne, I—I can't—"

"Why?" she snarls, pulling back to look at him in the face. "Why not? Why do you care about these people so much? Don't you know what they're like?"

(so close so close to having him; she can't lose him now; she _can't_ )

"Yes," he says, "I—I do know what they're like."

He strokes his fingers through her hair—god—fuck that feels—Roxanne can't help but lean into the touch.

"I care because—because I have to believe that they can be better. If I give them a chance."

She makes a noise of hurt misery and Megamind kisses her which is—why can't she have this; why can't she have it for real?

"Why are you so good?" she asks, when he breaks the kiss.

He laughs, quiet and breathless.

"I mean, I try really hard to be," he says.

She growls—he _is_ good; he's _too_ good; and it's the goodness of him that she's in love with but it's the goodness of him that's keeping them apart.

He bumps his nose against hers, and the unexpected—

That's not something anyone's ever done with her.

It's so—so sweet and affectionate, no blind passion, just—

"You could, um—you could try?" he says, and now he's _playing with her hair again_ , god, Roxanne is going to _die_. "Being—good. I mean," he continues, "you could—I could help you. If—if you wanted?"

She stares at him.

Is he serious?

 _Didn't they already have this fucking conversation on the roof?_

"…wouldn't your sidekick have something to say about that?" she says.

"Minion?" Megamind says. "No. Minion likes you; I thought you—"

"—not Minion; Metro Man," she says, lips twisting.

Megamind blinks at her, and then laughs.

"Flatterer," he says, and kisses her quickly, taking her by surprise again. "No, Wayne wouldn't have a problem with it; he'd actually—heh, he'd probably actually be wildly excited; he's been wanting to retire for years, and you stopping supervillainy would probably give him the perfect excuse, especially if—"

He cuts himself off, eyes going wide.

"Especially if what?" Roxanne asks, watching him.

"Um, I mean—I actually got into this—the—uh—the superhero thing, I mean," Megamind says, stumbling over his words, "—for community service, and so I'm fairly certain I could swing something like that for you if you were interested, and then Wayne really would be able to retire, because he'd have a replacement and—and we could. You said—you said that—together, we'd be unstoppable, and we could—we could. We could…be partners. If you wanted."

Her lips part.

 _Partners?_

"Partners," she says, "I—yes, partners, I'd—I'd like that."

For a moment the vision seems real enough to touch, but then reality sets in and Roxanne remembers who she is and what she is with a sickening twist of her heart.

She steps back from him, crosses her arms over her chest, trying to hold in the hurt.

"…it's a nice dream, sweetheart," she says quietly, "But it—it'd never work. They'd never let me; you have to realize that—"

"I—"

He reaches for her, but she can't, she can't let him touch her.

"Don't," she says sharply, wanting to be angry, needing to be angry, because anger is better than despair, "don't act like—you say you know what they're like, but you have no idea—"

"Roxanne—"

"Do you know what they did to me, when my powers first showed up?" she asks fiercely.

She'd thought he did, thought so when they talked on the roof, but maybe she was wrong. How can he think that _partners_ is something possible for her if he _knows_?

"They locked me in a lab," she says, "because they said I was 'too dangerous' to be around normal people. They put a shock collar on me, to teach me to control myself. Like I was a dog. I was fourteen. So don't you tell me that you know what they're like, because—"

"They did that to me, too," Megamind says.

Roxanne stops, goes very still.

"…they…"

"Not the shock collar," he continues, "but there was this—this helmet that they designed for me, after I got arrested as a teenager. It was meant to interfere with cognitive function, to keep me in line. I was lucky, the Warden—I only—I only actually wore it a couple of times; after that, it was always mysteriously broken when they went to put it on me, and like I said, after that, I got—let out on parole for community service and they stopped— I'm—I'm so sorry, Roxanne. I'm so sorry that you didn't have—someone to help you, like I did. I'm so sorry that—that you were alone. But you don't—you don't have to be alone anymore. Not if—not if you don't want to be."

Roxanne stares at Megamind, tilts her head.

"They did that to you," she says, feeling very cold, "and you became a superhero for them?"

"I—I mean—" Megamind's fingers twist nervously, "that was—like I said, that was community service, originally, and also sort of—um. Damage control. When we were teenagers, Wayne wasn't exactly the most—he was already a hero, but he didn't—he needed someone to make sure he remembered to think…"

"And now you want me to play nice," Roxanne says, "with these vicious, mindless idiots who decided to torture both of us for being different?"

(she wants to _burn this universe,_ wants to _turn it off_ like they talked about on the roof)

"They called me evil," she says. "Well, that's what they got. That's what they deserve."

(this world deserves it, deserves her, deserves everything she can do to it and more, deserves—)

"But that's not what you deserve, Roxanne," Megamind says.

Roxanne goes still again in shock.

Megamind comes to her, his hands fluttering as he touches her arms, her face, the touches gentle and soft and filled with so much love it makes her heart ache.

"Please," he whispers, "you deserve to be happy, Roxanne. Please let me—let me try to help you to be happy."

"I—can't—I can't," she says miserably, tears filling her eyes, spilling over. "I can't, my powers—I can control them now, but they're always there; I can't turn them off, and they'll never let me—they'll never let me, not like this—"

"I can fix that," Megamind blurts out. "I—I mean! Not—not fix like—it's not that you're broken, I don't mean fix like—I just—" He takes a sharp breath through his nose. "I can see that your constant low-level pheromone emission might pose a problem in certain circumstances, and I think I've come up with a way around it."

 _(a way around it?)_

"—you—?"

"Ah! Yes! I mean, it was actually sort of on accident," he says. "I was trying to figure out why your powers don't work on me; I assumed it had something to do with my species processing pheromones differently, or possibly having different pheromones key off attraction, so that it was almost like…mmm…like I was somehow 'blind' to the signals that you were giving off, yes?"

"…yes?" Roxanne says, rather dazedly.

"No!" Megamind says, gesturing excitedly with both hands. "Turns out I was completely wrong; it's not that my body doesn't sense the pheromones you give off, it's that my body actually produces a chemical that functions to block them! It's really quite fascinating—I did some experiments and I've put something together that I think should enable you to completely control the pheromone emission—"

"—and—taking this would…get rid of the pheromone powers entirely?" Roxanne asks slowly.

 _Fix her,_ yes, but also leave her powerless, defenseless, _not safe—_

"I mean—" Megamind wrinkles his nose, "in high enough doses, it could probably nullify them completely, so that you couldn't access them at all. But obviously that wouldn't be the goal. We'd have to do some experiments, of course, and I'd want you to look over my research to see if you think I've missed anything, but I'm confident that if we worked together, we could find a dosage level that would allow you to inhibit them just enough. So that you wouldn't be giving off the constant low-level emission, but you'd still be able to use them if you wanted to and I'm—not really sure why you're looking at me like that?"

 _Oh god._

"—nullifying them completely—wouldn't have to be the goal?" she asks, wavering on the edge of incredulous tears.

"Wh—no, of course not, Roxanne," Megamind says, as if of course not is an answer that anyone else besides him would give, "of course not—I—you don't have to try the pheromone inhibitor at all if you don't want to; we can come up with something else if you like. I just—it's—it's your choice; it's always your choice. I just want you to know that you do have that as a choice. That's all."

"That's all," Roxanne repeats. "That's _all?_ Megamind, that's—you're—"

She stops and gestures a little wildly, unable to come up with the words to adequately convey how absolutely impossibly perfect and good he is. He shrinks back a little, looking doubtful, and clearly the gestures aren't conveying her feelings properly either, so Roxanne throws throws herself into his arms and kisses him, crying and laughing at the same time.

The sound of the door opening, and of voices and laughter, makes them both jump and look over at—

"—you laugh but you know I'm right!" Minion says, to Metro Man. "You're just—uh…"

The two of them catch sight of Megamind and Roxanne. There is a long, fraught kind of moment in which they all stare at each other.

Metro Man coughs.

"Um," Megamind says.

"Sooooo…" Metro Man says, "is this a battle thing or a date thing? 'Cause I can't tell if I should strike a heroic pose or not?"

Roxanne blinks.

That is. Not the reaction she was expecting. From Megamind's friends. To the idea of _her_ with Megamind.

Minion, at Metro Man's side, is goggling at the Megamind and Roxanne, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, but his expression is just shock, no disgust or anger or outrage.

"Um," says Megamind again.

Holy shit.

Do these people—

—do these people actually _not hate her?_

Roxanne laughs, struck by sudden joy.

"Oh, there won't be any need for that," she says, giving Minion and Metro Man a Temptress smirk. "Haven't you heard? I've decided to renounce my wicked ways and reform for the love of a good man."

"—really?" Megamind says.

She looks at him again; his lips are parted, a beautiful pink blush lighting up the edges of his ears and his gorgeous sharp cheekbones.

 _(she loves him she loves him she loves him so much)_

"Yeah," she says softly, "yeah, that's—really."

"…okay! That's—that's great, guys," Metro Man says, "uh. Yeah. Minion and I are just gonna—go hang out at my place, now, right after I say I told you so—yeah, okay, Minion; I'm coming; I'm coming—"

Megamind definitely makes a rude gesture at him as he's kissing her, and Roxanne laughs into the kiss.

* * *

"'I told you so?" Roxanne asks Megamind later, arching an eyebrow. "Did he really?"

Megamind blushes and gives her a rueful grin.

"Everyone did, Roxanne," he says.

Roxanne laughs in amazed joy.

* * *

 ** _...to be continued._**

* * *

 **Day 26 of my Birthday Fic Month! Thank you all for continuing to read and review; it means a lot to me.**


	10. Chapter 10

"I'm sorry; I'm sorry; I'm so sorry," Megamind says, voice distressed and hands soothing as he holds Roxanne's hair away from her face.

Roxanne wants to tell him that it's all right—it's not as if they didn't both think this dose of the inhibitors was correct—but she's too busy throwing up again.

Clearly they need to look over the research another time.

* * *

"You kept it," Roxanne blurts out, catching sight of the houseplant.

Megamind glances up from checking the dosage calculations for the fourteenth time. Roxanne looks over at him and sees his eyes soften as he realizes what she's looking at.

"Of course I kept it, Roxanne," he says.

She swallows hard and turns away, drawing a fingertip gently up one of the plant's spiky leaves.

"I'll—have to tell Cyril how well his offspring is doing," she says, trying to hide the catch in her voice.

* * *

They do, eventually, get the inhibitor dose right; the first time Roxanne goes out in public and her powers don't leak out at all she bursts into shocked, relieved tears and Megamind pulls her into one of the empty library reading rooms so she can cry and he can hold her.

* * *

"You," Roxanne giggles, "you all— _steamrolled_ him! I didn't—I didn't have to do _anything!_ "

"I—I don't know what you mean," Megamind says, laughing, too, not even bothering to try to make the denial sound convincing. "The mayor is—extremely excited to have our reformed supervillain take Metro Man's place! Extremely excited!"

"We were very polite, Miss Ritchi," Minion says, quite angelically, as if he hadn't just been menacing the Mayor in a highly effective manner only a few minutes ago.

"Now he knows how it feels," Wayne says, looking darkly satisfied. "I was fifteen when he talked me into doing it in the first place _'oh, but it's your duty as a citizen; I know you'll make the right choice, young man!'_ The bastard."

Roxanne makes a happy sound, hugging herself, eyes closed. Megamind laughs, sudden and joyful, and picks Roxanne up by the waist, spins her around in the air. Roxanne shrieks with surprised, delighted laughter.

* * *

Figuring out the proper inhibitor dose and getting Roxanne accepted as a superhero actually both turn out to be…slightly less difficult than—certain aspects of her relationship with Megamind.

Much to Roxanne's dismay.

"We don't have to, Roxanne," Megamind says gently. "We don't ever have to if you don't want to."

"But I _do_ want to!" Roxanne says, hands fluttering in distress and frustration. "I've wanted you for ages; I want you _so much!_ I just—I just keep panicking; it's so stupid; I'm so sorry—"

Megamind kisses the top of her head and she curls up closer to him, presses her face to his shoulder.

"You had some extremely terrifying experiences with this," he says, his voice soft, "the panicking is understandable, Roxanne. And it's not as if it's your fault."

Roxanne makes a miserable noise.

"I just don't want you to feel like I'm playing with you," she says unhappily.

Megamind doesn't answer for a slight beat.

"Why not?" he asks.

Roxanne sits up to look at him.

"What's wrong with playing?" he asks. "We're supposed to be having fun! You telling me to stop, and me stopping—what if you didn't wait until you actually felt uncomfortable to say stop? What if you did it—like that game, you know, the one where you turn around and people try to walk to you and then you spin around and they're supposed to freeze—"

"…red light, green light?" Roxanne says, lips trembling on the edge of a bemused smile.

"Red light, green light!" Megamind says, smiling at her brilliantly, and then adds. "Do you know, I was so disappointed as a child when I found out that game didn't involve actual dynamite—"

Roxanne laughs.

* * *

Megamind kisses his way down her neck and then across her collarbones to her bare shoulder.

"Please," Roxanne murmurs, "can you stop?"

She's careful to phrase it as a question, and not, as she would if she were using her powers, a command. Megamind sits up immediately, though, his hands folded in his lap, an attentive look on his face, and a smile at the edge of his lips.

Roxanne laughs in breathless adoration and amazement. He's so—they've been playing this game of her asking him to stop at random times for an hour, all he's taken off of her is her shirt, and he still looks as if he's having the time of his life.

(he's so wonderful. so completely and utterly wonderful)

And there's something so very—reassuring about him. About his expression, about how very there he is with her, clearly entirely mentally present. Desire in his expression, yes, but none of that horrible blankness in his eyes.

She knew, of course, knew _logically_ that her powers don't affect him, but it's—really very reassuring to have it demonstrated so thoroughly like this.

She bites her lip and looks up at him through her lashes, then reaches out a hand and hooks two fingers beneath the hem of his shirt.

"Megamind," she says, "sweetheart—will you let me take off your shirt?"

An expression of pleased surprise flashes in Megamind's face.

"Yes," he says, "I'd—I'd like that, Roxanne."

* * *

(a line of well-watered houseplants stands beneath a big sunlit window in the old warehouse building—a large and luxurious spiky succulent in the middle of the row, and, beside it, another plant of the same type, smaller, but also green and growing well.)

* * *

And—Roxanne—

Roxanne doesn't feel afraid anymore.

* * *

(safe. she's safe. she's _safe_.)

* * *

 ** _...the end._**

* * *

 **Happy Day 28 of my Birthday Fic Month! Since today is the last day of February, that means it's also the last day of the fic month. Thank you all for reading and reviewing; I hope you all enjoyed the final chapter of the story.**


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